Amazon CloudWatch is a monitoring service for AWS cloud resources and the applications you run on AWS. You can use Amazon CloudWatch to collect and track metrics, collect and monitor log files, and set alarms. Amazon CloudWatch can monitor AWS resources such as Amazon EC2 instances, Amazon DynamoDB tables, and Amazon RDS DB instances, as well as custom metrics generated by your applications and services, and any log files your applications generate. You can use Amazon CloudWatch to gain system-wide visibility into resource utilization, application performance, and operational health. You can use these insights to react and keep your application running smoothly.

Submit Custom Metrics generated by your own applications via a simple API request and have them monitored by Amazon CloudWatch. You can send and store metrics that are important to your application’s operational performance to help you troubleshoot and spot trends.

You can use CloudWatch Logs to monitor and troubleshoot your systems and applications using your existing system, application, and custom log files. You can send your existing system, application, and custom log files to CloudWatch Logs and monitor these logs in near real-time. This can help you better understand and operate your systems and applications, and you can store your logs using highly durable, low-cost storage for later access.

Set alarms on any of your metrics to send you notifications or take other automated actions. For example, when a specific Amazon EC2 metric crosses your alarm threshold, you can use Auto Scaling to dynamically add or remove EC2 instances or send you a notification.